NCCAs Broken and Corrupt System Exposed Again With Ugly Gregg Marshall Saga
Gregg Marshall resigned from Wichita State yesterday and the school is paying him $7.75 million to go away. Let that sink in for a second. A coach accused of punching players, choking an assistant coach, making racist comments, and years of documented abusive behavior walks away with nearly eight million dollars while the people he allegedly harmed get nothing. This is college athletics in 2020 and its absolutely broken.
The allegations against Marshall are genuinely horrifying. According to ESPN, former player Shaquille Morris says Marshall punched him in the back during practice – on the same day Morris told the coach his mother had cancer. Multiple sources confirmed Marshall choked assistant Kyle Lindsted during the 2016-17 season. He allegedly made “Indian howling noises” and told Native American player Isaiah Poor Bear-Chandler to “get back on his horse.” He told Colombian center Jaime Echenique he would be “a great coffee bean picker.” This wasnt one bad day – it was years of documented cruelty.
How Does This Keep Happening Though
Heres the part that really gets me. The Athletic reported that allegations of similar behavior followed Marshall from his previous job at Winthrop, where he coached from 1998 to 2007. Former Winthrop players described the same patterns – racist comments, physical intimidation, mocking players with mental health issues. He was never disciplined. Instead he got hired by Wichita State and turned into one of the winningest coaches in school history. Because he won games, nobody wanted to look too closely at how he treated the kids under his authority.
Winning covers a multitude of sins in college athletics. Marshall took Wichita State to the 2013 Final Four. He made eight consecutive NCAA tournaments. He put a mid-major program on the national map. And everyone just looked the other way as players complained, as staff members reportedly got choked, as racist abuse became normalized in the program. Because the alternative was asking uncomfortable questions that might threaten the gravy train.
College athletics has fundamental structural problems that go way beyond one abusive coach. Players have no real power to report misconduct without risking their scholarships and careers. Coaches control playing time, recommendations, professional connections – everything a player needs to succeed. The incentives all push toward silence. And universities care more about brand reputation and revenue than student welfare even though they claim otherwise constantly.
The Payout Is The Most Insulting Part
Marshall allegedly punched students and hes walking away with $7.75 million paid over six years. Meanwhile the players he abused – many of whom transferred out and saw their careers disrupted – get nothing except the satisfaction of knowing he wont hurt anyone else at Wichita State. The system that enabled his behavior for over two decades faces no accountability whatsoever. The administrators who ignored warnings, who chose winning over student safety, keep their jobs.
Wichita State had to pay Marshall because of how his contract was structured – the buyout provisions made firing him for cause legally complicated, so they negotiated a resignation instead. Thats the university protecting itself from liability, not the university doing the right thing. If they genuinely believed the allegations, theyd have fired him and fought the lawsuit. Instead they wrote a check to make the problem go away while claiming in public statements that “student-athletes are our primary concern.”
The NCAA will do nothing because the NCAA does nothing about anything that matters. They police amateurism violations obsessively while ignoring actual harm to actual students. An assistant coach gets suspended for giving a recruit a hamburger but a head coach can allegedly assault players for years without consequences from the governing body. The priorities are exactly backwards and everyone knows it but nothing changes because too much money is at stake.
